My belief is that if I can achieve that level of entertainment by making the audience happy or sad or angry, then I have succeeded as an actor and have done my job. The profits and the fame as an actor will eventually surface, but first and foremost comes the work as an actor.
When I first saw California, it was extraordinary. Because I came from old, black, dark England, still recovering from World War II. I grew up with bomb sites everywhere.
I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.
I'm kinda a first take dude. The first time, cut that mic on, and the spirit is there, and what comes on the mic - I mean, even if I'm mumbling, I like to keep a lot of that initial thing that comes out. Cause that's the spirit.
I first started using social media when I was 12 or something - not publicly; I had private accounts.
My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.
In a first pregnancy, you don't have a child yet, so you can nap and see movies and exercise. The notion of 'baby' is abstract. You look at the ultrasound and don't really understand that the creature you're seeing is soon going to be your roommate.
Nobody can doubt Puerto Rico, sociologically, linguistically, culturally, and historically, is a nation. We have our own rich culture, thousand years of history, unique territory, and almost everyone's first language is Spanish, not English.
I'll always be Chinese first. It probably isn't politically correct to say or something that the majority understands; I can change my shoes, I can swap my passport, but, I'll always have this face.
Nuclear scientists lost their innocence when we used the atom bomb for the very first time. So we could argue computer scientists lost their innocence in 2009 when we started using malware as an offensive attack weapon.
When I was first pitched the show, I was like, 'Oh, God, a soapy show called 'Mistresses.'' But it wasn't that at all. It wasn't a bunch of women pulling guns on each other and stabbing each other in the back. We really have a core friendship.
The Beatles in 1963 came to America and became international celebrities, but Bobby Fischer was one of the first, as Elvis was, more in terms of the message created around him.
My dad showed me a football and would throw it up and have my dog - a German Shepherd - chase me around when I went after the ball. I caught it because I was scared of that dog. The next year, my dad talked to the commissioner of a local league and convinced him to let me play as a first grader with third graders.
The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.
When I first started out, I really felt like, 'I'm a journalist; I will be respected as a neutral observer.' And I don't feel like that holds true anymore. I don't think people respect journalists the same way they once did.
Cardiac depression is very powerful; it's very black; it's very dark. What I've learned to do is get out of my head and get into my heart. And it just sounds like an easy thing - it was difficult at first - to truly recognize moment to moment how fortunate I am.
For inspiration, we still demand the rhetorical high notes. Clinton has hit them before, in her speech in Beijing as first lady when she said, 'Women's rights are human rights,' and in her 2008 concession speech, when she talked about the '18 million cracks' in the glass ceiling.
You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
I had the advantage of reading the book, and when the script was first submitted to me, it was just another gangster story - the east side taking over the west side and all that.
I loved 'BattleDome.' It was the first thing I ever auditioned for, and I was so crazy in the audition that I knew I had the part.
Everyone has a different interpretation of characters we know and love from Shakespeare, from 'Miller'. There's specific things about them that are written that are kind of the fingerprints of the first person who played that role, and so I like to think of it as a road map.
I've been on 'Criminal Minds' twice! On the first show, a boy brought kids out to the woods and was beating them with a baseball bat, but I got away. Then they brought Tracy, my character, back - as a kidnapped girl. They saved me two times! Tracy lived!
When I was young, I was a sucker for smooth men. Bryan Ferry hired me, at 19, to be painted blue and dress up as a mermaid for the cover of his album 'Siren.' It was love at first sight.
It's funny because looking back at my first contest, I was 15 and surfing the Haleiwa contest wearing this tiny bikini. I remember not even thinking twice about wearing it - I just thought it was normal.
I have never experienced anything like walking out onto the stage of an oversold venue and, before the first note is struck, realizing that there is not going to be enough oxygen for all of us.
I was told 'no' a lot when I first got to Nashville, but I'm pretty stubborn! That's one of my faults and qualities.
My first paying job might have been doing a play, actually. My mom paid me to dress up as a flounder at my sister's 'Little Mermaid' - themed birthday party when I was little.
I used to think of the cartoons as a magazine within a magazine. First you go through and read all the cartoons, and then you go back and read the articles.
In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 saints of China, 87 of whom were ethnically Chinese. My home church was incredibly excited because this was the first time the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged Chinese citizens in this way.
I went to a Katy Perry concert, and I experienced pure bliss for the first time in my life.
I'm not some cute guy who is trying to be successful off that. I really want the music to come first.
Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns, you're putting the cart before the horse.
The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy,' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.
'Paris, Texas' is the first film that I've totally cared about, the first movie I totally wanted to do - and that after 27 years that I considered my prison term.
I remember meeting the likes of Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart for the first time and being completely starstruck.
When the Internet really first started to hit, people felt this would be the death blow: after suburbs and long commutes and television and the death of the family dinner, this would be the last straw that would totally break society.
